Were they misled by the Met Office? - by Richard... Thursday, December 02, 2010

Were they misled by the Met Office? - by Richard... Thursday, December 02, 2010

Dr Vicky Pope – the Göbbels of the Met Office - puts this current freezing weather down to "climate variability", telling us that our senses are deceiving us. If you look at the long term trends, we are in fact experiencing fewer freezing winters and more heatwaves, she says.

This follows suggestions from the self-same Met Office, offered at the end of October, that we should expect an "unusually dry and mild winter" – a prediction which famously relies on the same computer systems which produce the models for global warming projections.

Now, as Britain grinds to a halt, we hear that the government has ordered "an urgent audit of the country's snow-readiness". Amongst other things, transport secretary, Philip Hammond, says there is "no excuse" for poor communication with stranded motorists and passengers.

What might be more productive to investigate, however, is the degree to which the various authorities have been totally misled by the fools in the Met Office (again), and how much winter budgets have been trimmed as money is siphoned off into "climate change" projects.

COMMENT: MORE GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

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What energy shortage? - by Richard... Wednesday, December 01, 2010

When you read this, you begin to dream of imaginative and painful things to do with wind turbines. They are taking us for fools.

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Bears poo in woods - by Richard...

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has come up with a stunning finding, that a lot of EU money is misspent and rather large amounts end up in the pockets of the Mafia.

I shouldn't be dismissive, but this is being carried out in conjunction with the Financial Times, which has always been a cheerleader for the project – and still is. Even to this day, they cannot get their heads round the idea that it is hard enough keeping track on our own crooks (aka politicians). When the money goes international, and the accountability and supervision weakens, then it is inevitable that public money will be misused.

The only remedy here, therefore, is to stop giving any money to the EU. That is the only answer, but one the FT is not yet able to deal with. Instead, it devotes its resources to telling us the bleedin' obvious. What will be really interesting is when it gets off the easy stuff and starts writing about the really big crooks.

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More global warming - by Richard...

It continues ... counting the current precipitation (it snows as I write), this is the sixth consecutive fall we've had here since the current round of bad weather started. I do not recall ever experiencing persistent snow this early in the season – the weather is more like February than early December.

And it is not confined to the UK. Sweden is looking grim, while other parts of Europe, namely Switzerland and Germany, are having their own problems.

I hope those bloody fool warmists are proud of themselves. "Oh! It's weather," they shriek. Yeah ... right. They are not, though ... they're laughing all the way to the bank – and we, like the fools we are, are paying for it.

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Open thread - by Richard...

The forum is very much part of the overall package on this blog, where readers provide the information in part of the mutual process of keeping informed. Thus, I am going to make a habit of putting up an open thread - the last one worked quite well, but it obviously needs refreshing now and again.

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Extending the paywall - by Richard...

The Register is suggesting that The Daily Telegraph is thinking of emulating The Times and retreating behind a paywall.

There was some hint of this in a recent online reader survey, where the paper seemed most interested in views on payment for online content. But, in the manner of government "consultation", this now seems to have been an exercise in confirming a decision already taken.

Such a development, should it happen, is one to be welcomed. It will make for one less derivative source to track, and remove a temptation to go for easy copy, requiring us bloggers to rely more on original material. That can only be good.

Needless to say, I will miss a few commentators like AE-P, but not enough to overcome idea of paying for Louise Gray's output. And there is the rub. I have no rooted objection to paying for good quality content – but the idea of paying to be ill-informed is an anathema. To make online payment work, the newspapers need to up their games but, since they all seem to be devoid of a "listening mode", I don't see that happening.

The great danger though is that we end up with an even more fractured society. It will be split between the ill-informed – the diminishing band of people who read, and largely believe newspapers – and the rest. In many ways, though, it is better to be uninformed than ill-informed. The newspapers seem to be doing their best to make that happen.

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Forum - by Richard...

Forum registration is disabled now. Thank you to those who did register - and welcome. Only about 100 spam applications got in at the same time. Most have been zapped, but there are a few I'm not sure about. If you have registered but have not dropped me an e-mail (or got one back confirming that your account has been activated) let me know and I'll sort it.

The exercise has been rather successful - about ten new members signed on, bringing the total to just over 1,000. I'm going to weed out some of the older members who have not contributed, keeping the forum to a select 1,000 active members, and I'll open up the forum for registration again next week.

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A perfect metaphor - by Richard...

On the one hand, we have billions being spent on "climate change", its mitigation and all the other fatuous schemes related to the global warming scare, controlled by people of diminishing brain and even less sense.

On the other hand, we have unseasonal cold and a light dusting of snow in London, and the public transport system falls apart, causing acute distress and inconvenience to millions of people.

Meanwhile, that unspeakable fool Cameron is prattling about football. For God's sake – the man is supposed to be prime minister of the United Kingdom. All you can do is shake your head and wonder how we managed to sink so low.

UPDATE: Reading the blatts this morning, one sees the headline, "Snow leaves commuters stranded". It did no such thing of course - what left people stranded was a mixture of unpreparedness and incompetence. Says David Greaves of RSA insurers, "Bad weather in the run-up to Christmas will have a major impact on the UK's economy ... we're looking at £1.2 billion [lost] every working day".

This is where public services and government - local and central - have their parts to play but, while they coinstantly have their hands out for our money, and have open cheque books when it comes to their global warming obsession, we see unremitting failure when it comes to the basics of keeping the roads open, the pavements treated and the public transport system running.

We are truly in the hands of fools and knaves.

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Of hell and handcarts - by Richard... Tuesday, November 30, 2010

We're domed.

And Ambrose has spoken (written, actually). It would appear (to our complete lack of surprise) that the Irish have been well and truly shafted. But, writes Ambrose:

It is not for a British newspaper to suggest which course to take. Both outcomes are ghastly, but as one Irish reader wrote to me: if Eamon De Valera could defy world opinion in 1945 by sending condolences to Germany for the death of the Fuhrer, today’s leaders need not worry too much about scandalizing those who made them swallow Lisbon. Compliance is traumatic. Default is traumatic. What the Irish have before them is a political choice about what they wish to be as a people, and a nation.

This is fighting talk, on top of this, which he wrote earlier.

However, I suspect that the only difference between us and the Irish is one of timing. Would they accept British members in the IRA?

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Lost in space - by Richard...

Rajendra wants to send mirrors into space. A better idea might be to send the old pornographer into space himself, permanently (joined by Louise Gray, of course). The hot air saved would bring the temperature down a degree or too, especially if they should be joined by the lost soul who wrote this tripe:

An effective climate regime can only be built on by (i) designing principles of fair allocation of the available carbon space and (ii) agreeing on an appropriate effort sharing formula. The inequitable access to the atmosphere becomes self evident in the fact that average emissions per human year for Annex I Parties in the past has been 13.97 tCO2e and that of Non-annex I Parties is only 1.98 tCO2e. Evidently Annex I Parties have not only used their entitled carbon budgets and exhausted all their entitlements from the future but have also used that have been entitled to the Non-annex I Parties. Implicitly, in a completely fair world and on account of historic responsibility of Annex 1, the Annex 1 need to immediately turn negative emitters. However, given that all Parties will need some time to adjust their economies and hence will need some carbon space to enable such adjustment, irrespective of the fact that they have already utilized it, agreement on entitlements for the future on the basis of available carbon space is essential.

A more tortured piece of prose it would be hard to imagine, but someone, somewhere did actually write it. And it will come as no surprise to learn that this is part of an advert for a TERI side event at Can'tcun, written by Manish Shrivastava, Centre For Global Environment Research, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi. May God have mercy on its soul, as it goes on to write:

In this context the TERI side-event will discuss TERI’s proposal on how to operationalize the carbon budget approach. Realizing future entitlements into actions, under different scenarios of per capita equity based carbon budget, requires the pragmatic interplay of national and international responses. To enable this, a rethinking of policies, instruments and institutions is essential for an effective global climate regime. The side event will deliberate upon the relevance of, and challenges in operationalizing the carbon budget approach in relation to the limitations of domestic financial capabilities of India to remain within the available carbon budget for the next four decades. It will also discuss the significance of the link between the "historical responsibility" and required net transfer of financial resources from developed countries in achieving the 2 degree target.

Don't forget that we the taxpayers are kindly donating £10 million to this institute, to deliver this kind of tosh. I am sure we are all very grateful to our masters for supporting such a worthy enterprise.

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Forum - by Richard...

By popular request ... the forum is open for new registrations, wef 10:00hrs zulu. I'll keep it open 12 hours. When you register, please send me a quick e-mail with details of your username, and I'll activate your accounts.

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Completely mad - by Richard...

If ever there was an insane concept, it is the Nissan leaf, which needed a subsidy of £5,000 to make it just twice as expensive as a conventional, better-performing equivalent. So what do they do? They vote it European Car of the Year, with 257 votes from the 58 judges across 23 European countries.

There is something terminally sick about a group of people who can do something like this. Somehow, one is not surprised to find that the jury is comprised of motoring journalists. A sharp-eyed reader, however, notes that the registration ends in NBG. One would like to think that this was not accidental.

That the car gets the award, however, suggests a darker agenda. Have they been bought off?

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What is going on? - by Richard... Monday, November 29, 2010

Looking to do a round-up of the Irish situation, as promised last night, to be blunt, I don't think I really know what is going on, or what the next steps are going to be.

However, we do get the Daily Mail twittering about markets being "braced for another nail-biting session", with hopes that the "£72 billion bailout for Ireland" will calm share, bond and currency markets and stop the crisis spreading to other eurozone members including Portugal and Spain.

Next, we discover that what is singularly missing from all this are a few minor details – like the details of the financial package that was supposedly agreed over the weekend. And there's the rub. Nobody really knows what is going on – which makes much of the comment little more than extruded verbal material.

One thing is fairly clear though. If you take a population of five million and a debt of €100 billion (including interest), you are looking at every man, woman and child owing €20,000 ... each, just to pay back the EU/IMF "bailout". It would be cheaper to hand in the keys and leave the country.

COMMENT: IRISH THREAD

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Poleaxed? - by Richard...

You know it makes sense.

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China bubble - by Richard...

I have been saying for some time that the Chinese economy is a basket case. With a highly insecure political system to boot, it is only a matter of time before it crashes and burns. And now, it seems, I have company.

Mind you, I would say the same of India. I do not believe the hype about that country. It will be dragged down by its innate inefficiencies and most particularly by the corruption of its ruling elites.

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Cravenly conformist? - by Richard...

"Far from being 'feral beasts', to use Tony Blair's phrase, the British media are overly respectful of authority. Newspapers and broadcasters tend to be suspicious of those who do not play the game ... ".

So writes John Kampfner in The Independent about Assange and the latest Wikileaks coup.

I would not have used the words "overly respectful" though, as that does not get close to the phenomenon. A better phrase might be "cravenly conformist", but even that does not really capture the essence of the beast. The closest I get is here with the discovery that:

News reporting is not a matter of discovering and publishing facts. Rather it is a process of gathering accounts from a very limited number of approved sources, and stitching them together to provide a defensible narrative. Any relationship with actual events, much less the truth, is entirely coincidental - and usually accidental.

Once you understand that, everything falls into place.

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